In two door cars with rear seating capacity, it is desirable to allow the front seats to be released from their adjusted, locked positions and slide forward freely by passengers entering the rear seats. Such an "easy entry" front seat release is most convenient if it is activated by a simple button or lever, or even by the mere action of pushing on the front seat's back rest by the entering rear passenger. However, an easy entry front seat release and slide mechanism is inconvenient for the front passenger if its use disturbs the fore and aft position to which the front seat occupant had already adjusted the front seat. Therefore, several designs exist for so called "memory mechanisms" which will maintain or "recall" the adjusted position of the front seat as it slides forward, and automatically re latch it in that original position as the front seat slides back again.
One such memory mechanism, for which the instant invention provides an improvement, is disclosed in co-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,846 issued Aug. 1, 1989 to Weier, which is incorporated herein by reference. Briefly summarized, a pair of parallel, outboard and inboard seat tracks mount the seat to the vehicle for fore and aft movement. Each track assembly has a lower channel fixed to the vehicle body floor, and a relatively movable upper channel fixed to the seat frame. A row of locking teeth on each lower channel is releasably engaged by a spring biased lock bar that freely pivots s on the upper channel, thereby latching the upper channels (and seat) to the lower channels (and floor) in any desired fore-aft position. The spring biased lock bars can be opened or unlatched either directly, by a front seat occupant while adjusting the front seat, or indirectly, by an entering rear seat occupant while pushing the front seat forward for clearance. The front seat occupant directly releases the lock bars by manually twisting a rod that is journaled to outboard upper channel, to which a direct actuator for a main lock bar, that is, the lock bar on the outboard upper channel, is keyed. The main lock bar, as it is lifted, in turn contacts and rotates a crank that is freely pivoted on the same rod to which the lock bar actuator is keyed. The crank pulls on a so called slave cable, which pulls and rotates the other lock bar out of engagement with the teeth on the other, inboard lower channel. The same crank is also independently rotatable by an easy entry cable, which is pulled by the bending forward of the front seat back or the like, and which can rotate the crank without affecting or moving the main lock bar actuator or the rod to which it is keyed. Then, instead of being lifted by the inoperative lock bar actuator, the crank catches and rotates the main lock bar, while simultaneously opening the other lock bar with the slave cable.
To assure that the front seat is returned exactly to ("remembers") its original adjusted position after the entering rear passenger allows the front seat to slide back, a memory mechanism is activated by the same seat adjuster handle. The memory mechanism consists of a releasable quick connect plate slidable along the outboard lower channel. The quick connect plate has an elongated, wear resistant slider that covers and blocks the teeth in front of the main lock bar. A memory marker pivoted to the plate and normally locked to the lower channel is released and picked up by the main lock bar actuator to move the plate along with it and drop it at the new position when the front seat position is adjusted.
When the easy entry mode is used, the plate and memory marker remain locked to the lower channel in their original position as the seat moves forward. On the forward trip of the front seat, the main lock bar is held out of the lower channel teeth and slightly away from the quick connect plate's slider by the tension in the easy entry cable and its pull on the crank. The other lock bar is held out of engagement with its lower channel teeth by tension in the slave cable. On the return trip of the front seat, when the tension in the easy entry cable and crank has been deactivated and released, the main lock bar can no longer be held out of tooth engagement by the crank. Instead, the main lock bar rotates down slightly under the force of its return spring, hitting and dragging along the slider of the now stationary quick connect plate, which provides the hold open feature. Tension remains in the slave cable to hold the other lock bar out of engagement with its lower channel teeth. When the main lock bar finally reaches the end of the quick connect plate slider, its return spring can then rotate it down and back into engagement with the outboard lower channel's teeth at the original adjusted position. The other lock bar does the same through the slave cable. A feature of the existing memory marker system that could potentially be improved is the hold open means, considering the friction and noise caused by the main lock bar dragging back along the slider.